Your cart is currently empty!
Steven Coulson
Steven has been drinking beers, wines and spirits for decades and has a propensity to go about them at length after a few drinks.
Latest Posts
- 57/m: Love beer, but it doesn’t love me as much anymore
- No Stupid Questions Wednesday – ask anything about beer
- Does anyone else get treated like a beer snob for ordering literally anything that isn’t a macro lager?
- Is there a polite way to refuse a beer that’s being served in the wrong glassware without making everyone at the table uncomfortable?
- # What’s the most pretentious thing you’ve ever said about beer that you secretly didn’t understand yourself?
Categories
Tags
Social Links
The Art of Pretentious Beer Talk: Confessions from the Craft Beer Community
As enthusiasts of craft beer, we often find ourselves in situations where we feel the need to showcase our knowledge and appreciation for the finer nuances of our favorite brews. Recently, while attending a bottle share, I had a moment of self-reflection that prompted me to question the authenticity of some of the jargon we toss around.
Picture this: a barrel-aged sour is opened, and without missing a beat, I find myself declaring how I “truly appreciate the characteristic brett interacting with the oak tannins to create some beautiful phenolic compounds.” In that moment, I was full of enthusiasm and confidence—until a sinking realization hit me: I have no clue what phenolic compounds really are. I suspect I might have cobbled together a mix of wine vocabulary and bits from a brewing podcast I’d listened to ages ago.
What bleeds into this scenario is the troubling fact that everyone around me nodded in agreement, as if I had just delivered a profound insight into the beer world. Feeling emboldened, I even tossed in a comment about the beer “expressing local terroir through indigenous microflora.” In retrospect, it was clear that I was diving headfirst into a sea of pretentious phrases, simply hoping no one would challenge my claims.
Not long ago, I found myself describing a beer’s “mouthfeel complexity” when, in reality, I was just trying to articulate that the beer had a thick texture. It felt as if I had taken a page from a craft beer version of Mad Libs, stringing together terms I’d picked up in passing without fully grasping their meanings.
This experience led me to ponder a common thread among craft beer aficionados: are we all just echoing the words of others, fearing that our own interpretations might flag us as amateurs? The pressure to sound knowledgeable can lead to a curious masquerade, where we risk losing the genuine enjoyment of the beer itself while trying to impress those around us.
Is there anyone else out there who feels the same way? Let’s embrace the deliciousness of craft beer, with or without the jargon. After all, at the end of the day, it’s about enjoyment and connection, not performances and pretense. Cheers to authentic conversations about the brews we love!